‘It’s Like Russian Roulette’: No More Than 20% Of Municipalities Testing School Lunches For Radiation (Only 10% In Fukushima And 8% In Miyagi!)

If you’re a parent seeking reassurance, don’t look to Sunday Mainichi magazine, which last week pointedly demanded, “Are children’s school lunches really safe?” Chiba Prefecture in October initiated daily testing, and two weeks later detected radioactive cesium — 350 becquerels — in shiitake mushrooms. Echoing Takarajima’s housewife, the mother of a second-grader says, “How much radiation would my child have consumed? I can’t help wondering, and it sends shivers up my spine.”

Surveying the issue from Tohoku to Tokyo, Sunday Mainichi finds no more than 20 percent of municipalities testing school lunches for radiation. Tokyo’s 23 wards are relatively solid in that regard (42 percent of Tokyo’s municipalities test), but the Tohoku region, the heart of the crisis, seems astonishingly lax (Fukushima 10 percent, Miyagi 8 percent). “It’s like Russian roulette,” said the mother of a Chiba Prefecture first-grader.

“To be honest, we could have done better,” admits a Fukushima City official. “Until summer the city didn’t even know that testing equipment was available.”

If radiation were less spectral — if you could see it, smell it, touch it — its presence might be easier to cope with.

‘Easier to cope with’? If radiation would be made visible as blood red spots covering Japan (Everywhere!) the people would have panicked and fled a long time ago.

And make no mistake even if radiation levels in food are below the ‘radiation safety limit’ it is everything but safe!

… these are not “dosimeters” but “glass badges” that passively collect radiation information. It won’t help these children or their parents to avoid high-radiation areas and spots, it won’t tell them how much radiation they will have been exposed unless they are sent in to a company to interpret the data.

Radiation exposure is increased by a factor of a trillion. Inhaling even the tiniest particle, that’s the danger.

Yo: So making comparisons with X-rays and CT scans has no meaning. Because you can breathe in radioactive material.

Hirose: That’s right. When it enters your body, there’s no telling where it will go. The biggest danger is women, especially pregnant women, and little children. Now they’re talking about iodine and cesium, but that’s only part of it, they’re not using the proper detection instruments. What they call monitoring means only measuring the amount of radiation in the air. Their instruments don’t eat. What they measure has no connection with the amount of radioactive material.

Dr. Helen Caldicott (Co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility):

You’ve bought the propaganda from the nuclear industry. They say it’s low-level radiation. That’s absolute rubbish. If you inhale a millionth of a gram of plutonium, the surrounding cells receive a very, very high dose. Most die within that area, because it’s an alpha emitter. The cells on the periphery remain viable. They mutate, and the regulatory genes are damaged. Years later, that person develops cancer. Now, that’s true for radioactive iodine, that goes to the thyroid; cesium-137, that goes to the brain and muscles; strontium-90 goes to bone, causing bone cancer and leukemia. It’s imperative … that you understand internal emitters and radiation, and it’s not low level to the cells that are exposed. Radiobiology is imperative to understand these days.”